


Belletrix (on war's shoulder)

by Ivaylo, skitzofreak



Series: constellations in your skin [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Rated For Violence, Rebellion, Scars, art included, jyn week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/pseuds/Ivaylo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: She doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back, just runs.





	Belletrix (on war's shoulder)

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Part 2 of 4, written for Day 5 of Jyn Week for the Jyn Appreciation Squad (prompt: "Scars / Rebellion"), in collaboration with [Ivaylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/pseuds/Ivaylo), aka @crazy-fruit on tumblr, who drew the cover image. She also has a great deal of lovely art worth checking out [on her blog](http://crazy-fruit.tumblr.com/).

Jyn runs.

The slick red mud of Onderon flies up under her second-hand boots, splattering her cut-down jungle-green fatigues with red speckles that will dry orange (if she lives long enough). The humidity of the summer air is choking, and sweat drips down her flushed skin, soaking her shirt at her neck, armpits, back. Her scalp aches where the fucking slaver yanked on her tight braid before the spiked ribbon woven into it dug into his palm and left him cursing and shaking his bloody fingers. The comm in her ear crackles, Euwood shouting something about the safe house in the Malgan Market, and Jyn doesn’t catch all of it but she veers hard right towards downtown, where the bustle of the market crowd is already audible even above the thundering of footsteps in her wake.

Euwood’s also shouting something that sounds suspiciously like _I told you not to fuck with those slavers, you little idiot,_ but Jyn has neither the time nor the inclination to give a shit. Euwood’s too cautious, still stinks too much of Alliance regulations and protocols despite his defection to the Partisans last year. She’s definitely not concerned with whatever Euwood thinks is the right thing to do. Euwood looks at a giant cage full of chained people surrounded by slaver guards and says something stupid like _that’s a fight we can’t win_ , as if that is somehow relevant. Like Saw doesn’t fight every second of his life just to stop shite like those  _shutta_ intestinal worms sneering at the cage full of suffering. _We do what we must,_ Saw tells her all the time, and Jyn has spent the last four years burning that mantra into her brain. So she does the only thing that makes sense, the only thing she can bear to return to base and tell Saw she did. She orders Euwood to take her team back to Base Orenth and she shoots the slave merchant through the head, slams a stolen vibrohammer down on the main cage doorlock, sets off a gas grenade in the street to cover the scattering slaves - and now half the furious slaver’s hirelings and a fair number of bellowing Unifar Market Security Guards are on her tail. (Funny, for people so unconcerned about cages full of crying people, the Guard are remarkably touchy about a little tear gas.)

So she runs.

It’s early in the afternoon, during the midday meal hours, so the crowds are too thin to hide her as she darts through open air stalls and around honking gravcars. She can’t risk diving into one of the apartment buildings either, because this is the poorer part of Iziz on the outskirts of Malgan Market, and no one will care if a bunch of slavers smash up the homes of the people who live here. Worse, the slavers might decide she’s too much trouble and just replenish their lost stock with locals instead. The right bribe to the right Unifar Guardsmen and no one would say a thing to stop them. She can't let that happen, and not just because the thought makes her a little sick to her stomach. Saw understands collateral damage ( _we do what we must_ , _child_ ) but the Partisans rely on the good will of many of the poorer neighborhoods, and dragging angry slavers through their bedrooms won’t win them many friends.

Jyn skids around corners in the red mud and ducks when she hears the whine of a blaster, and she doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back, just runs. Most of the street crowd moves out of her way, and she doesn’t check but she thinks from the cursing and shouting behind her that many of them move right back in her wake, stumbling her pursuers at least a little. She’s grateful, suddenly, for her young face, her small stature. She’s twelve years old and wearing the green fatigues of a soldier, but she knows that to many she looks younger, smaller, weaker, and the uniform hangs off her thin frame. Most of the time this is a disadvantage. Sometimes, like now, it’s really kriffing useful. People take pity on a child running from slavers.

So the crowd is on her side (in a low key, uncommitted way) and the slavers are clearly offworlders who don’t know this city the way Jyn does, and she’s small and fast and determined, too, so for a little while it looks like she’s going to get away clean. She just needs to make a quick loop around Malgan Market before she heads to the safe house, to make sure she’s free of any tails, and then she –

**_PAIN_ **

_explodes_ in the side of her head, and the world suddenly flips

            upside down and

     throws her into

                              mud.

Something hit her.

Hit her in the head.

On the left side of her head.

Enemy. Hit her.

 _Get up!_ Saw bellows. _Death takes the slow and bewildered! UP!_

Where is up?

Boots thumping nearby. Enemy coming. Get up.

Enemy!

Red mud in her eyes and boots near her face oh shite roll over roll over and – _ah!_ – the boot kicks her viciously between the shoulder blades instead of full in the face. She’s scrambling now, clawing the mud and kicking her feet to get them under her because _d _eath takes the slow and the bewildered__ _a_ nd she gets to her hands and knees but there’s red mud in her eyes (there’s something red in her eyes) so she doesn’t see the hands until they are around her throat. “Gotcha,” someone snarls in Basic, Human voice, warped with cruelty but Human and she knows what to do when a Human holds her up by the neck. She brings her arms up and slams her elbows into their wrists, breaking their lock and dropping her to the ground, which sways under her feet but Jyn’s already moving because she knows what to do, _we do what we must_ , Saw taught her, and she darts forward with her head down until her skull rams into something soft and the Human goes _oof!_ and falls away from her, flailing.

Jyn swipes her arm over her eyes and it works, it clears away just enough of the red that she can see the target, Human, male, middle aged, staggering back with his arms around his waist and gasping. She can try to retreat now, he might be too winded to chase for a few precious seconds, but then he’ll just go back to his cage of prisoners, his credits made on the backs of the suffering, so Jyn launches herself forward again, this time with greater precision. Her hands are small but she carries brass knuckles wherever she goes so when her fist connects with his genitals, he makes a horrible noise like a dying womp-rat and drops to the mud, writhing.

More boots nearby, people running at her, but the red mud is slipping back in her eyes and her head hurts, it hurts so much, so she turns and staggers away.

Hands catch at her, and she turns with her teeth bared, her brass knuckles cocked back to strike, but “hey, hey, easy Lieutenant, it’s me,” and she sees Euwood tugging at her arm, pulling her into an alley while he watches over her head. Behind him, Codo is also watching, why the fuck would he bring Codo? Codo's green as Onderon’s jungle, only been with the Partisans three months. Of all the people Euwood could have brought back from her team, he brings Codo? Why –

“Stop growling at me, Lieutenant,” Euwood snaps at her in a low, tight tone (always so fussy about military etiquette, Euwood, always insisting on calling everyone by their rank when there’s really no rank except Saw, and then Jyn, and maybe Magva when she isn’t being crazy, but he calls Jyn ‘Saw’s Lieutenant’ and Saw doesn’t care so Jyn doesn’t either), “I’m on your side, remember? And they’ll hear you out there.”

He jerks his head toward the street, where market crowds are half-heartedly scattering around the slaver thugs who come running after their buddy, still curled up on the ground and moaning several steps away. Both of him. Curled up.

No, only one. She’s…seeing two, but that’s not important.

“Wow,” Codo says in a hushed tone. “You’re so bloody.”

“Shut it, Recruit,” Euwood cuts him off before Jyn can, and she’s embarrassed to realize that his hand is still on her thin shoulder, holding her steady. Worse, she’s leaning against the brace, listing slightly to the side as she blinks back the red mud in her eyes. _Death takes the slow and bewildered,_ though, so she shoves away from him – and immediately fetches up hard against the opposite wall. Codo makes some stupid little noise like she startled him, but Euwood only walks closer and holds out something. Rag. Rag for her face. Well, alright, she can use a rag. Her sleeves are dirty anyway.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” Euwood says, pointing at the side of her head, and Jyn doesn’t know what he means until she reaches up to feel the huge, tender lump on the side of her head and her hands come away with more red than mud can explain.

“Oh man, he practically took your _ear_ off,” Codo exclaims, and this time Euwood slaps the back of the greenhorn’s head as he gives some curt response that Jyn doesn’t hear because she pokes her left ear and almost passes out. _Breathe, Jyn. Breathe. Don’t pass out. Death takes the slow and confused and we are not going to die today. Not going to fall down. Not going to fall down and never get up again, no Mama, this hurts so bad, but_

“They’re gone,” Euwood says, and Jyn blinks and pushes herself up from where she’s slumped against the wall. “They had to get a stretcher for their buddy. Some blood between his legs, poor bastard.” Despite the grim words, Euwood chuckles a little. “Come on, Lieutenant. Better get that ear patched up before it scars.”

“It will,” Jyn grunts at him, and wonders why. Not important. Right now, she just has to get to the safe house, get the mud off her face (is it mud? Or is the red all hers? Best not to think about it). Right now, she has to clean up and lay low until it’s safe to head back to base, back to Saw. He won’t like that she got hurt, won’t like that Euwood had to pull her into a hiding spot that she didn’t see herself, maybe he’ll even agree with Euwood that this was maybe kind of a stupid thing to do. But Jyn figures she’s only doing what she must.

Shit, it really hurts, though.

Later, when the bacta patch finally comes off and she gets a good look at what the slaver _ffask_ has done to her ear – a nasty slice right across the shell, a chunk of the upper cartilage gone entirely – Idryssa tells her not to worry about her looks. “If you grow your hair out,” she says in a brisk but kind tone, “no one will see the damage. And even if they do, the right person will still find you beautiful.”

Jyn stares at her ear in the mirror, and then at Idryssa, because she can’t even begin to parse why the woman thinks this is somehow important to her. She starts to bind her hair back into it’s tight braid, to the many hells with how ugly her scar looks, but Saw stops her. “It’s an identifying mark,” he says shortly. “Hide it.”

She doesn’t like it, but she understands, so Jyn takes her knife and hacks a chunk of hair hair short, the stuff around her face, and lets it fall in ragged locks down around her ears and cheekbones. Idryssa _tsks_ , because it’s sloppy and she probably still thinks Jyn cares about that, somehow, but it’s done and there’s no use talking about it. Jyn puts away her knife and follows Saw to the Command room, because there is work they must do.

Her newly shorn hair itches against the pink scar on her ear, but she doesn’t let herself rub it. She’ll get used to it, eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> [Belletrix](https://astrologyking.com/bellatrix-star/) is the star that makes up the left shoulder of [Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_\(mythology\)), a constellation often associated with war. (And not just by the greeks; in Hindu mythology, Orion's constellation is also part of [Skanda](https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/gods-goddesses/the-hindu-god-skanda-indian-mythology-in-the-21st-century), a god of war.)
> 
> [Euwood Gor](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Euwood_Gor) was an Alderaanian who originally joined the Alliance to Restore the Republic as a Pathfinder, and then split off and joined Saw's Partisans instead (as the wiki puts it, he "went native.") It sort of highlights the differences between the Alliance and Saw, even years before Rogue One, that a guy considered too loose with the rules for the Alliance would still be considered uptight in the Partisans.
> 
> "Base Orenth" = Saw apparently had bases and cells of troops scattered all over multiple systems. Base Orenth is just the largest one on Onderon at this time (in my headcanon).


End file.
